Blog
Christmas Closing Dates 2025
As the festive season approaches, we’d like to let you know our Christmas and New Year closing dates. Our shop will close on Tuesday 23rd December at 1pm, and we’ll be taking a short break over the holidays. We’ll be back and reopening as usual on Monday 5th January at 9am. Our online shop will remain open throughout this time, but please note that no orders will be dispatched and emails will not be answered while we are closed. All orders and enquiries will be dealt with when we return in January. Thank you so much for all your support throughout the year, it truly means a great deal to us. We wish you a peaceful Christmas and a happy New Year, filled with warmth, wool, and plenty of knitting time. Warmest wishes,All of us at Jamieson & Smith
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New Online Shop!
Hello everyone, this is our first post on the blog since we integrated it into our new Shopify online shop! We’re delighted that our blog has found a new home, right here on our updated Jamieson & Smith online shop. Bringing the blog and online shop together means everything you love about J&S is now in one place: stories from Shetland’s knitting heritage, peeks behind the scenes in our Lerwick shop, updates from the wool store, and of course, the latest news about yarns, patterns, and projects. By keeping the blog on the website, it should be easier. When we talk about a new yarn shade, a designer collaboration, or the history behind a picture, you can browse the products mentioned without having to hop between pages. We want it to feels a bit like wandering through the shop, spotting something on a shelf that matches a tale we’ve just told! If you’ve followed our blog for a long time, don’t worry, all the older posts are safely here too. And if you’re new to J&S, this is a lovely place to start. We’re excited to share this new chapter with you. Have a browse, have a read, and as always, thank you for supporting Jamieson & Smith.
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Christmas Closing 2024
Hello everyone, a quick post for you today! As of now (Monday 23rd December at 1pm) we are now closed for our Christmas break. We will reopen on Tuesday 7th January 2025 at 9am, during this time no orders will be dispatched or emails responded to. We'd like to wish all our wonderful customers, friends, and followers a very Happy Christmas! Thank you so much for your custom and support this year – it means the world to us. We hope your festive season is filled with joy, love, and plenty of knitting!
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Scadder Fleece
In the wool store last week, we came across a fleece which used to be common here. Now, it is a much more rare occurrence. This is a fleece with markings described as 'scadder'. This is a dialect word to describe a Shetland Sheep with coarse, longer hair down the back from the neck to the tail. In some cases it even has a ruff or mane around the neck, this very coarse and long hair is alongside fine wool in the rest of the fleece: The fleece we got last week has extremely fine and soft wool in most of the fleece. There is just the long, coarse hair down the middle and around the neck. Oliver said this is one of the best examples of this type of fleece he's seen for a long time. Shetland Sheep have similarities with Norwegian Sheep breeds like Spaelsau and Vilsau. You can see in this Vilsau Sheep how similar the long wool is to the Scadder fleece above: Vilsau sheep, Norway Shetland Sheep, Shetland With breeding and crossing over time, this scadder marking is becoming rarer. Every now and then we get an excellent example, although its not seen as desirable for yarn or the breed it is interesting as it is a throwback to the ancient genetics of Native Shetland Sheep. The fleece highlights the importance of sorting wool. The long wool on the scadder fleece is graded as Rough Coloured. The fine wool is Superfine Coloured - These represent two extremes of handle. If this is not sorted, it results in a thick and thin yarn. For more information, see this blog post we did on the Power of Sorting. Oliver also discusses scadder markings on a blog post here. We hope you found this post interesting. To keep up with us, make sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter. Happy knitting!
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Laebrack Colourways
The Laebrack pattern, designed by Margaret Stuart is a classic Shetland Lace jumper, featuring bands of colour which due to the stitch pattern - Old Shell, creates a lovely wave effect. Its knit in the round to the armholes then the front and back are worked separately, the sleeves are knit in the round too. Laebrack is shetland dialect for the breaking of the waves on the Seashore and you can really see why! We recently reprinted this pattern and have added a chart for the motif but its also in written form in the pattern too, its a very simple but effective pattern, its made in our 2ply Lace Weight: L-R: L95, L101, L203, L27, L54 The original colourway in the pattern is above, its a lovely mix of greys and pops of pink, but we thought we would share some other possible colourways: Naturals L-R: L1A, L202, L3, L4, L5 Green & Grey L-R: L69, L40, L27, L54, L77 More pinks L-R: L43, L95, L203, L27, L54 Yellows and Naturals L-R: L96, L28, L202, L3, L4 Orange & Browns L-R: L38, L53, L78, L4, L5 You might also remember a few years ago an image from the Netflix drama 'Rebecca' went semi-viral as people looked for the pattern, it is extremely similar to the Laebrack and may even have been made at one time from that pattern, we put together a colourway based on it too!: Rebecca - L-R: L152, L150, L14, L40, L69 for Laebrack we would put them in this order but would always advise swatching: A - L40, B - L150, C - L69, D - L152, E - L14 2ply Lace is a great yarn for lighter weight and more summery garments, its available in 30 shades, many of them vintage inspired and there a great selection of dyed natural shades in the range too. You can find the Laebrack pattern here in a paper copy or here and here digitally, its also in a book which is out of print but you can find it used very cheaply - The Traditional Sweater Book by Madeline Weston (ive linked to amazon but you should be able to find it from many used book sellers) the book contains lots of great traditional patterns from around the UK so its a great purchase anyway! We hope you are having a nice Summer however the weather is beside you, we are in a spell of dull, windy, rainy weather here so we are hoping for an improvement soon, happy knitting!
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5ply Shetland Cones
Hello everyone! A quick post from us today to let you know we recently got more stock of our 5ply Shetland Cones, this is our newest range of yarn which we launched at Wool Week in 2023. Its a lovely yarn (if we do say so!!) made from 100% Real Shetland Wool and inspired by our maritime history and environment here in Shetland. Although we are rightly famed for our bright Fair Isle and Lace knitting there is also evidence of Gansey/Guernsey type jumpers worn in Shetland which makes sense when you look at our location, we are and have been for many years a main port in the Fishing industry so people often travelled up and over from places with their own Knitting tradition. The 5ply cones are 250g so for an average adults Gansey in 1 colour you will need between 3/4 cones. Cones save you some ends and some money over buying the balls, we currently have stock of all 20 shades so if you are interested this is the time to purchase! You can find the cones in the shop or online here and for more information about the yarn see our earlier post here and another we wrote about the colours in the range here. If you miss our more regular updates make sure you are signed up to our newsletter, we send one out once every month with updates of new products, patterns and news from Shetland. Happy Knitting!
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Videos
Hello everyone! You may remember during 2020 and 2021 when we had no in-person Shetland Wool Week we decided to produce along with Keiba Clubb online videos, featuring some of the classes we usually host at Wool Week. They are a great source of tips, tricks and information, so we thought we'd highlight them here! In 2020 we had two videos from Wool Week patrons, one being the current one, Alison Rendall and Fair Isle Cuffs and Thumb Gussets and Knitting a Fair Isle Bookmark with Hazel Tindall, this is one of our most popular classes we hold at Wool Week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CZmq60jkSA&list=PLE1uY31y5ZbdrvBhuZSwNKyzjm7PcsmJ_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cygWM1e_sw0&list=PLE1uY31y5ZbdrvBhuZSwNKyzjm7PcsmJ_&index=3 We also have two videos from J&S staff, one from Ella all about our yarn ranges, and one from Oliver about sorting and Grading Shetland Wool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rCR3WHHSIs&list=PLE1uY31y5ZbdrvBhuZSwNKyzjm7PcsmJ_&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nMMpv-k2p4&list=PLE1uY31y5ZbdrvBhuZSwNKyzjm7PcsmJ_&index=5 in 2021 we added more videos, one from Alison about Edging and Ribbing in Fair Isle, another from Hazel about Belts and Basics, a great all-around tips video and a great video about knitting glove fingers in Fair Isle with Lesley Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoY6ypmFfpc&t=878s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YIPTy26vmI&t=1783s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqJy76a1Bc&t=524s We also had a few more videos from J&S, one about Speed Swatching for Fair Isle with Ella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKbE4XL8QiI&list=PLE1uY31y5ZbcXGS7ROlKZuFaZPXHmZezS&index=4 And two videos from Oliver all about his working life at J&S: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSGp1e4FTls&list=PLE1uY31y5ZbcXGS7ROlKZuFaZPXHmZezS&index=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-R3bc5vYOs We hope you agree there are some great tips and stories in these videos, you can find these and all our other videos on our Youtube Channel here, happy knitting!
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Christmas Closing 2023
Hello everyone! Just a quick update, apologies if you've already seen this in our monthly newsletter (sign up here): we are now closed for our Christmas Break from 1 pm on Thursday, December 21st, 2023, reopening at 9 am on Thursday, January 4th, 2024. While our online shop remains open, no orders will be dispatched until the 8th of January at the earliest, and email responses will be delayed. Thanks for your support in 2023! However you choose to celebrate, may your Christmas be filled with peace and joy! Best, all of us at J&S x
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5ply Colours
Hello everyone, thank you for the great response to our new Yarn, 5ply Shetland! Today we thought we'd show you a closer look at the colour palette we chose to produce. The yarn is available in 20 shades, 14 solid and 6 natural/overdyed. As discussed in our last post the colours were inspired by our maritime history, Shetlands landscape and those classic seafaring colours: We knit up a square of each shade, so today we thought we'd go through them: We had to include two Navys, both a mid and dark - these are timeless nautical shades. The blues continue with Turquoise and Marine, two blues that lean towards a greeny, jewel tone. Then we have Airforce, a very grey blue and Olive, a rich mid-green. Marsh is a lighter yellow-green and Mustard is a bright golden yellow. There is the rich warm Rust and the super bright Scarlet As well as the refined Maroon and luscious Aubergine. The final solid shade is the purpley grey Lavender, and the base for all these shades is the lovely creamy White. We also used a mix of undyed wool to create the Natural, this light grey is then overdyed to create the Twilight shades - such as Turquoise Twilight Mustard and Rust Twilight And Scarlet and Lavender Twilight! We can't tell you how delighted we are with how all the shades came out. We wanted to create a well-rounded group of colours and the Twilight shades really add something special to the range: It's amazing how much the 5 colours change depending on the White or Grey base! We've also spent a lot of time over the last few weeks working on redoing our Yoal Gansey pattern, seen here modelled by Oliver and knit by Sandra using the shade Turquoise. Originally it was designed and knit in Shetland Heritage holding the yarn double. But as we found out two strands of Heritage matches the gauge of 1 strand of 5ply! So we have extended the size range and fixed any mistakes. We have ordered paper patterns but the pattern is available digitally on Ravelry and Payhip now. If you are interested in how much yarn you would need for a Gansey using the Yoal here is an estimate: Chest inches 37 (40.5, 42, 45.5, 47.5, 50, 51, 56.5) = 640 (680, 730, 770, 830, 850, 900, 960) grams The stitch definition is clear to see, we are so happy with this yarn! As a reminder here is the Yarn information: Yarn Information 100% Real Shetland Wool Worsted Spun 5ply/Sport Weight, wpi 16 115m/125yds per 50g ball 575m/625yds per 250g cone suggested needle size 2mm-3mm Available in the shop and online here If you own or have a Local Yarn Store that you would like to carry it in the future please contact wholesale@shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk - We are looking to make it available to stockists very soon! Happy Knitting!
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